Wild Blood

by Nancy A. Collins

  Creighton coasted up to the pumps and cut the engine. The yellow dog stopped in mid-scratch, lowered its ears and whimpered. An old man who was almost as skinny as the dog tottered out of the shack, wiping his gnarled hands with an oily bandanna.

  Skinner, acting on a nod from Creighton, hopped out of the truck and moved to one of the gas pumps. The yellow dog got to its feet and began to growl.

  “Hush, Sheba! What’s got into you, dog?” The geezer said as he returned his to his hip pocket. “Don’t bother with that pump, son; the old girl’s a bit tricky. I’ll get it for you.”

  “That’s what you think, Pops.” Creighton was suddenly out of the truck, the muzzle of the .38 pressed against the old man’s head. “Take it easy and no one gets hurt.”

  Before the gas station owner could respond, the yellow dog sank its teeth into Creighton’s shin. The escaped prisoner swore as he kicked the animal away, and then opened fire, shooting it point-blank. The dog yelped and jumped straight up in the air, collapsing against the nearest gas pump, blood gushing from its wound.

  “You shot my Sheba!” the old man wailed.

  “Come on, Pops,” Creighton snarled, shoving the gas station owner ahead of him. “Let’s go see what you got in the till, huh? Skin! Gas up the truck!”

  As Skinner unhooked the nozzle from the pump, he found himself staring at the dying dog. The animal turned its head toward him, its eyes already glazing over, and gave a pained, low whine, which he recognized as its death song. He squatted down alongside the beast and touched its head, whimpering in sympathy. He did not know why he did it—it just seemed the natural thing to do. Sheba licked his hand, shuddered and died.

  “Stop messin’ with that damned critter and put some gas in the tank!” Creighton snapped as he strode back out of the station.

  “Where’s the old man?” Skinner asked.

  “I tied him up with a length of clothesline. Don’t know why he put up such a fuss, all the old coot had in the till was a couple of twenties.”

  Skinner cast a nervous glance back at the office. “You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

  “He didn’t take kindly to me shootin’ his dog, so I had to use the gun butt on him. He’ll have one hell of a headache when he comes to, that’s for damn sure! Now let’s put some gas in this jalopy and get the hell outta here before one of the locals shows up!”

  Skinner finished filling the truck’s tank and hopped back into the cab. He watched the gas station dwindle in the rearview mirror until it was nothing but a dot on the landscape. When he looked down at his hands he saw they were stained with dog’s blood.

  Once they crossed over into New Mexico, they headed east on the highway until it met up with the interstate.

  “We’re home free, Skinner! Once we get to the Texas Panhandle, all our worries will be behind us!”

  “This guy you know from jail—what’s his name again? How come you’re so sure he’ll be willing to let us hide out at his place?”

  “Chic an’ me, we go back years. We used to hop freights together. We pulled a few jobs here and there. We held up this mom-n-pop joint in some piss-ant town in South Dakota and all we got to show for it was fifty stinkin’ bucks. Chic was so mad he pistol-whipped the cashier! When I asked him why he it, he says ‘that’ll learn ’em to make some money!’ That Chic! He’s a real hoot, I tell ya …”

  Skinner chewed his thumbnail as he stared out the window of the truck. He was trying hard not to look at the .38 resting on the seat between him and Creighton, but it was no use. It was as if the gun were some malign magnet, drawing his eyes to its blued-steel barrel.

  It was hard to believe that less than a month ago he’d been a college student, studying city planning, and working hard to make the Dean’s List. Now he was on the run with a convicted felon. Within the walls of Los Lobos, Creighton had seemed harmless, almost quaint. And compared to bad-asses like Mother and Rope, he was the absolute salt of the earth. But now that they were free, Skinner realized his companion was genuinely dangerous. But who was he to condemn Creighton? At least he wasn’t a cannibal and a parricide, which was more than he could say for himself.

  He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to blot out the images rising, un- bidden, inside his skull. He was a monster. There was no other way to describe it. He would have preferred to believe himself mad, but there was no point in deluding himself. He was a werewolf. But how could that be? In all the movies he’d seen you only became one by being bit by another werewolf. But he’d never been bitten by anything larger than a squirrel.

  Unless this had something to do with his birth parents.

  Skinner woke up with a start. It was dark and the truck was no longer moving. As far as he could tell, they were parked at a rest area, somewhere along the interstate. Creighton was nowhere to be seen.

  Skinner climbed out of the cab, stretching the muscles in his arms and legs. He scanned the parking lot, which was empty save for a large, dark-colored sedan three spaces down from the pick-up. But there was no sign of Creighton.

  The pressure tugging on his bladder drew his mind away from the whereabouts of his traveling companion. He had to take a wicked piss. He headed toward the comfort station, which was made of adobe. The interior of the men’s rest room smelled strongly of industrial disinfectant and stale piss. He sighed in relief as his bladder let go into the urinal. Riding in that rusty bucket of bolts had really done a number on his kidneys.

  Once he was finished shaking the dew off the lily, he moved to wash his hands at the sink. Upon looking into the mirror he was startled to see that his previously dark hair was now liberally streaked with silver. Stunned, he reached up and plucked one of the strands free. It was real, all right. Before he could figure out what, if anything, it all meant, a groan came from one of the toilet stalls, followed by a muffled cry and the sound of something hard hitting something soft. A second later Creighton emerged from the stall, zipping up his pants. When he saw Skinner, he smiled and held up a set of car keys.

  “We got ourselves a new ride, kid!”

  Skinner walked around Creighton to peer into the stall he’d just vacated. A middle-age man dressed in a rumpled business suit, the pants of which where still around his ankles, lay unconscious on the floor of the rest room, his hands bound with what looked to be his own tie. There was a large knot on his bald spot from where Creighton had pistol-whipped him.

  “He’ll be okay, kid,” Creighton said reassuringly. “The cleaning staff will find him in a couple of hours. By that time we’ll be long done.”

  “You could have killed him!” Skinner exclaimed.

  Creighton shrugged. “So? He’s just a fag.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Skinner scowled. “So what does that make you?”

  “I only pump butt when I’m doin’ time or I need something, like right now,” Creighton replied, genuinely insulted by Skinner’s accusation. “When I’m on the outside, I’m a straight pussy man, and no one can say otherwise! Guys who do it because they want to—well, that’s perverted! Now, c’mon, let’s get goin’!”

  Ten minutes later they were headed northeast in a late model Buick LeSabre with Creighton at the wheel. “Lookit this baby! This sure beats ridin’ in that junk heap, don’t it? It’s even got cruise control!”

  Skinner grunted and turned to look out the window. It was a moonless night and it should have been too dark to see anything, but his vision was proving surprisingly keen. He thought he saw a pale blue light moving at the same rate of speed as the car, along the shoulder of the road.

  As he observed the light, it took the form of a wolf. No. Not a wolf. Something like a dog, but even bigger and possibly wilder. It ran alongside the car, keeping pace effortlessly, its tongue hanging from its open mouth. It was both beautiful and fearsome in its freedom, and Skinner felt a kinship with the beast that went beyond his ability to express with human things like words.

  For the first time since he’d discovered the truth about himself, Skinner wondered
if his journey might end in something besides the death house.

  “Are you sure about this, Creighton?”

  “Sure as shit! Believe me, Skin, nothing is gonna go wrong. All we gotta do is walk into the store, I point the gun at the clerk, you clean out the till, and then we hightail it outta there before the cops show up. It’s foolproof!”

  “Have you ever held up a store before?”

  “Sure, plenty of times! There was that package store in Arkansas—did three years for that. Then there was that gas station in Oklahoma—did five for that ’un …”

  “Forget I asked,” Skinner sighed.

  “You worry too much, kid. That’s the problem with straights and suits. They spend so much of their time worryin’ they don’t do shit cause it might not work. Me, I never let that bother me. If I need something, I take it. Or try to, anyways. It’s instinct, man. You gotta learn to go with it.”

  Skinner shuddered. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  They waited until after midnight to pull the job.

  Creighton picked the convenience store earlier that day by loitering around its magazine rack, thumbing through magazines with pictures of tattooed women while he kept one eye on the register.

  “We should be able to get a couple hundred bucks, easy,” he explained. “They’re one of them small independent stores, not like Circle K or 7-11. They don’t have one of them damn time-lock safes where you can only get thirty, forty bucks out every ten minutes. I hate those fuckers.”

  The cashier was a slightly overweight young woman with hair that was blonde at the ends and dark at the roots and a fondness for eye makeup, and was dressed in a synthetic blouse emblazoned with the store’s logo on the breast pocket. She barely glanced up from her Smartphone when Skinner entered the store and pretended to browse.

  A couple of minutes later Creighton walked in, hands in his pockets, and headed for the beer case. He selected the most expensive brand and strode purposefully to the checkout counter. Skinner snatched up a bag of chips and moved to join him, doing his best to look casual even though his heart was beating so hard it felt like it was trying to jam itself between his ribs.

  “Anything else, sir?” the cashier asked as she rang up the purchase, her breath made sickly sweet by the cud of gum parked in her cheek.

  “Yeah, I’ll take everything you have in the drawer,” Creighton replied as he pulled the .38 from his pocket.

  The cashier stopped chewing her gum and stared at them as if she’d been turned to stone. Creighton swore and motioned for Skinner to empty the register. Skinner tried to keep his hands from trembling as he reached for the money, but all that was in the register were a fistful of singles and a couple of five dollar bills.

  “Is that all?” Creighton asked, his eyes suddenly darker than Skinner had ever seen them.

  The cashier’s fear came off her in waves, the scent hot and rank. There was something erotic in its smell and Skinner felt himself become aroused. The trembling grew worse, only now it wasn’t just nerves that made his hands shake.

  “I said is that all, bitch?” Creighton repeated, prodding the terrified cashier’s shoulder with the barrel of the gun.

  She nodded dumbly, her eyes never leaving the gun.

  “You’re lying! I know you got more’n this!”

  “C’mon, man! We got to get out of here before the cops show up!” Skinner said urgently.

  “No way!” Creighton said with a shake of his head. “This bitch is holdin’ out on us!”

  The cashier frantically shook her head. “That’s all there is, mister, I swear! I just came on-shift an hour ago!” she said tearfully. “The boss takes all the money out of the store just before midnight and makes a deposit. That’s all the cash there is, I swear!”

  Creighton’s anger was replaced by a stoic calm almost as unnerving as his rage. He nodded a couple of times and stepped back, letting the barrel of the gun drop.

  “Figures,” he muttered. “Fuckin’ figures.”

  Creighton then raised the .38 and fired two rounds into the cashier’s forehead, knocking free the wad of bubblegum in her mouth. She went down in a spray of brains, toppling the cigarette display rack behind her so that she lay sprawled amid scattered packets of Winstons, Camels and Pall Malls, a halo of blood radiating from her ruined skull as gray matter dripped from the Slush Puppy machine.

  Skinner blinked rapidly and stared at the dead girl as if he were seeing her for the first time. Blood. There was so much blood. The smell of it was sharp and bright and coppery, making his mouth water. And then the Change was on him, turning him inside out, pushing his muscles and bones into a new geometry. He gave a brief howl of ecstatic pain as he vaulted the counter that separated him from the fresh kill.

  Creighton’s previous cool completely evaporated. His face was pale and he was shaking and sweating like as if gripped by a fever. “Shit, man! We got no time for that!” he admonished. “The cops are gonna be here any second!”

  Skinner was too busy savoring the taste of warm flesh and lapping up freshly spilt blood to pay any attention. He snarled in delight as he ripped the cashier’s liver free of her body. He was so incredibly hungry it felt like he hadn’t eaten for days.

  “Leave it!” Creighton leaned across the counter and grabbed Skinner’s shaggy shoulder. “We gotta get outta here!” He recoiled as Skinner growled and snapped his fangs in warning.

  Creighton swore at the sound of approaching sirens. “Motherfucker! The bitch triggered the silent alarm before I capped her ass!” He glanced at Skinner, who was still feasting like a starved pit bull.

  He was fucked, big time. He was sure to get the needle, or whatever they used to put born losers like him out of society’s misery in this godforsaken state. Lord only knew what they’d do with Skinner. Probably stick wires in his head and run tests on him before they snuffed him and hid the truth of what he really was. The thought of Skinner in captivity made Creighton sick. He knew what it was like to be imprisoned, but for a creature like Skinner it would be a hundred times worse than his hardest stretch had ever been. Hell, everyone knows it’s cruel to keep a wild thing locked up.

  The moment the patrol cars fishtailed to a stop in front of the convenience store Creighton stepped outside to greet them, gun in hand. The headlights from the patrol cars turned the front of the store into a hideously over lit stage, with him as the star.

  “Throw down your gun and keep your hands where we can see them!” said e a voice from behind the glare.

  Creighton replied to the cop’s command by shooting out the lights of the patrol car closest to him. The four police officers instantly returned his fire. As the bullets entered his body he felt his organs rearrange themselves from the inside out, and he wondered if this was how Skinner felt when he went from man to wolf.

  Skinner raised his head upon hearing tires screech to a halt outside the store, a length of entrails still dangling from his jaws. He abandoned the kill and leaped over the counter. He growled at the harsh glare filling the store and lifted a claw to shade his eyes. A second later he heard shots fired, and the bright light was abruptly reduced by half, only to be answered by a thunderously loud volley of returned fire. Through the storefront window he could see Creighton jerking and spinning about like an awkward marionette before falling to the ground.

  The police cautiously moved forward, guns held at the ready in case he tried to take one of them with him before he died.

  One of the officers knelt to retrieve Creighton’s dropped weapon, just as Skinner launched himself through the plate glass window. He landed on all fours beside what was left of his friend, slivers of glass shining in his bristling pelt and snarled at the cop, displaying a muzzle full of razor-sharp teeth.

  “It’s a fuckin’ dog!” the police man exclaimed. “Some kind of wolfhound or something!”

  Skinner growled and stood up on his crooked hind legs. The cop swore and opened fire, hitting him in the chest. The gunshot felt like he’d be
en punched by a boxer and stung like someone had put out a cigar on his ribcage. He lunged at the police man who shot him, ripping him open with a single swipe of his claws, so that the cop’s guts spilled out onto his own shoes.

  Skinner dropped back down onto all four and raced off into the night as the other officers ran to the aid of the disemboweled patrolman. Creighton was dead. There was nothing he could do to help his friend. He’d spilled blood for blood, which was as much as he could do. There was no time for mourning—he had to get away before more humans arrived.

  He could hear the angry, frightened shouts of the police as he loped into the darkness, followed by gun are. Vicious, burning stings stitched their way across his back. The pain was intense, but he kept running. If he stopped for even a moment he was doomed—he knew that if the humans caught him they would put him back in the cage.

  He ran through the darkened streets, keeping to the deepest shadows, cut- ting through alleys, crawling through drainage pipes and scaling fences until the pursuing sirens began to fade. Satisfied he had succeeded in eluding his enemies; he slumped against an alley doorway and began to lick his wounds.

  Though his silvery pelt was stiff with blood, he could tell he was no longer bleeding. His chest felt like someone had used a sledgehammer to crack his ribcage open, and his back and shoulders throbbed as if he’d run naked through a swarm of killer bees.

  His vision began to fade in and out, like the reception on an old television set, going from black and white to full color to black and white again. Just before he passed out, he noticed a pair of vans parked at the far end of the alley.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Skinner awoke with a buzzing in his head and what felt like ground glass in his bladder. When he coughed, he brought up clotted blood.

  “Creighton?”

  He struggled to open his eyes and bring his blurred vision into focus, only to find himself face-to-face with a young man wearing sunglasses. The stranger had reddish hair that grew from the middle of his head like the mane of a horse and hung down over his shoulders like a lion’s mane.